I never knew how much I needed Jesus Christ to be the King of my life until I was a freshman girl who had all her securities yanked out from under her formerly, very confident feet.

You see, I was pretty impressed with myself. I had been a cheerleader my entire life. I had dated the star athlete of our high school for 5 years. I had the perfect family and some pretty great friends from school and youth group.

I was college-bound for the university of my boyfriend's choice where I would cheer varsity and be his happy companion...life after high school was looking very promising.

That is until I found out there had been quite a few other girls that the boyfriend had taken an interest in over the past five years of our relationship. I quickly canceled my tuition to the school we were to attend together, unpacked my bags and registered at the university in my hometown (the last place on earth I wanted to go). I hung up my pom poms because I had already missed tryouts and I said goodbye to the majority of my friends who headed out of state to school. I was living with my parents and none of this was what I had in mind for myself.

Three days after being broken up with and starting my freshman year I heard of a senior guy who was interested in little ole freshman me...and I was smitten! (cue red flag to be waved by the stupidity police.)
We immediately started dating and the life I had built around guy #1 was quickly transferred to guy #2! In my wise mind things were looking up. In reality, things were about to head further south than ever before.
This relationship went spinning out of control to the most unhealthy of places and my world quickly became a living nightmare.

I had made boys the world and my ego my god. And it wasn't working for me.
Meanwhile, there was this girl who was really involved at my church and with a campus ministry at my university. She would constantly pursue me and try to care for me spiritually. Sometimes I would be all about that and other times the guilt of my lifestyle would make me avoid her like the plague. She invited me to a conference over winter break and I obliged her.
When we arrived at the conference I knew I could roll with the Christian crowd for a solid week because my faith was one "priority" in my life. The second night a few staff women shared their testimonies and one in particular had 100% of my attention. This woman shared that God loved each of us in the midst of our guilt and sin and that it wasn’t a brownie point system of trying to earn God's favor. Rather it was God's favor toward all those who are in Christ that makes us loveable by God. She talked about 1 John 1:9 and asked us to truly confess and repent of the sins in our life and to trust Jesus to continually be the sacrifice for our sins. By the end of the night the faith in Jesus that I had known and had as a priority in my life for so many years BECAME my life. I surrendered every area from pom poms to boys to the Lordship of Jesus and asked the Holy Spirit to be my guide instead of myself. I finally realized I am daily in need of God’s amazing grace.

The past nine years have been an outworking of these exact same principles that are so basic yet so transformational!